Well, the upcoming robot revolution may be arriving sooner than expected. At least, if I was a self-balancing robot spending a long, hot summer cutting weeds along the highway, I might start to "wonder why I have to take orders" a lot sooner.

Well, I just put together all the great input from a bunch of machine builders about how they support and when they decide to renovate legacy machines for Control Design's June cover article, "Old Machines, New Lives," and practially everyone has some good advice.

We just wrapped up a webcast that discussed the differences between stepper motors and servo motors, and how to make the right choice for driving a linear actuator. We had two users discuss their particular applications and the product manager from Bimba helped explain the technology.